This week’s Reading Digest contains at least two important concepts. The first is that Ernest Borgnine was fucking awesome and beloved by all the peoples of the world. We’ve got a lot of links to Borgnine memorials below (and a couple of them are chalk full of cool videos). The second is that things can always get worse, as demonstrated by today’s final link. In addition to those, we have a bunch of awesome fan made artwork this week, including a partial skateboard, an oil painting, and a drawing of the Simpson clan as characters from Watchmen. There’s also two links to Batman stuff, someone who thinks Matt Selman can actually write, a 7-11 YouTube video, and a Briton who likes American theme parks.

Enjoy.

Semi-original news anybody! – Smooth Charlie’s Link of the Week is a new blog from an old friend. Gran2/generalsherman67 has begun watching all the Futurama episodes. He’s following the Me Blog Write Good template and writing reviews followed by highlights (or lowlights). He’s about halfway through Season 1 so far, and it’s very much on par with Mike Amato’s thorough Simpsons reviews. (Personally, I tend to skip the synopsis and read the bullet points. I’ve seen the old episodes, of both The Simpsons and Futurama, so many times that my eyes tend to glaze at reading another rendition of stories I know by heart, but the opinionated observations are always worth reading.) Good luck!

Detention in the ’90s – A (borderline) professionally inked school desk with about two dozen 1990s cartoon characters expertly drawn on it. That’s a lot of detention, methinks someone was a rogue hall monitor.

Quotes -Homer Simpson – This link has a ton of well formatting Homer quotes, and while I don’t have any personal experience with how Pinterest works, if it spreads the word about hitting referees with whiskey bottles, then all is well.

The Simpsons Art – A Tumblr site dedicated to art on the show. I didn’t see any Zombie Simpsons, and there are some neat juxtapositions. I never noticed that Salvador Dali painting in the background of “Homer the Vigilante” before.

A 10 Word Tribute to Ernest Borgnine – For me he’ll always be the wise cracking Russian in Ice Station Zebra, Dominic Santini in Airwolf, or possibly the narrator in that weird Merlin movie on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Damn, Borgnine was in a lot of stuff.

I wasn’t allowed to watch “The Simpsons” because according to my mom, “The Simpsons” were “insoportable y malcriados.” For those of you who don’t understand Spanish, she’s saying they were annoying and incredibly rude.

Top 5 best sitcoms – A brand new blog starts out with a list on which the show comes in a measly fifth out of five. I blame Zombie Simpsons.

5. Last but not least, The Simpsons Ride. First ride we went on in Orlando and the first of many motion simulators. My experience up to this point had been in British-equivalent simulators where you’re meant to feel like you’re in a Red Arrow aeroplane. US simulators take this concept so much further and shit on any simulator you’ll ever ride in a British theme park. The effects blew my mind & this ride was only beaten by Spider-Man by virtue of SM being 4D.

America, fuck yeah.

The real icon of America – Discussing 7-11 inevitably leads to discussing the Kwik-E-Mart. That leads to a YouTube video I don’t think I’ve ever seen before of one of those 7-11s that got a Simpsons makeover for the movie:

Spinoff! – And finally, I get to end with someone who agrees with us (though in this case it’s because I’m astroturfing):

Welcome to The Ann Arbor Review of Books (beta). This site is a spinoff of the Dead Homer Society, a website two friends and I started as a way to help distinguish The Simpsons, one of the finest and most popular cultural institutions of our time, from Zombie Simpsons, the merchandising fueled franchise that is immune to widespread criticism about declining quality because it generates more than a billion ($1,000,000,000) dollars per year. The Ann Arbor Review of Books aims to take that kind of criticism (skeptical, reality based, easily ignored) and apply it to modern commercial media generally.

The Simpsons is beautiful, funny and profound; Zombie Simpsons is ugly, boring and disposable. Those two ideas are, more or less, the entire point of this site. The linked post is the beginning of my pitiful (and like to fail) attempt at broadening that concept. I don’t know how many of this site’s readers will be interested in Dead Homer Society-style critiques of things other than Zombie Simpsons, but this is your chance to find out (though I do plan to continue inserting my radical right wing messages into every post). My review of The Longest Daycare (and Ice Age 4) will post there at 4pm Eastern (US) today.

Tell Aaronson and Zykowski:

Related

5 Responses to “Reading Digest: Unasked Replacement Edition”

I feel like I’ve seen Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. Someone who actually thinks Matt Selman is a GOOD writer. Never thought I’d see the day. My opinion would be that the show is irreparable at this point, but if they do change show-runners it should either be someone from the way-before time like George Meyer, or someone who has no connection to the show whatsoever. Switching from Jean to Matt Selman (who hardly has any connection to the classic seasons) is simply running in place.

I also like how the author of that post thinks Matt Selman represents “new TV.” He’s been with the show since season 8, which by the way was 15 years ago. Futurama and Family Guy were started, cancelled and restarted in that time. South Park was in its infancy. In TV terms, 15 years ago is ancient history.

It’s a wasteland. Almost his entire career is Zombie Simpsons. He’s only got credits on two other shows, Seinfeld and The Office. His Seinfeld work is five episodes as a “program consultant” in 1995, and a lone “story” credit in 1996. His sole credit from The Office is as an actor playing “Blogger” in 2010. Everything else on there is Simpsons from the Scully years or later.

He’s never done any significant writing to which we can compare his Simpsons stuff. Every other showrunner (even Scully) has gone on to create a new show, sometimes with success, sometimes not. Selman just sits in that safe, well compensated cocoon and cranks out dreck. I honestly have no idea if he could do better because, as far as I can tell, he’s never tried.

Well, if you’re involved in Seinfeld and the Office, you probably get a free pass, but I do agree that being credited with THE WORST EPISODE EVER (by a wide margin) should probably end your career. But you know, Bill Odenkirk writes for the Simpsons, doesn’t he? He’s a GREAT writer, having written some good Futurama episodes, and he wrote for one of the best comedy shows ever (up there with The State, Hardcore TV, Mighty Boosh, Look Around You, Excel Saga, and Sifl & Olly as making me laugh my ass off so consistently)… MR. SHOW. And, uh, his episodes still suck. Okay, “The Seven-Beer Snitch” is probably one of the best episodes of Zombie Simpsons, but that’s not saying much (gotta love the Oz “Adabesie’s hat” reference!)….. Anyway, point is, I dunno if I trust any “Written By” credits on the Simpsons. There might be one great writer, but the writing staff and team in general is going to shape the script into crap, irregardless (look at Swartzwelder’s late scripts). “WRITTEN BY” always seemed to suggest the guy who came up with the concept and/or maybe the most gags on the episode.

“SHOWRUNNER” has a lot of responsibilities, but I do agree that they get too much blame (or credit, really) for the quality of the show. Or lack thereof. I mean, Al Jean is awesome, he wrote some of the best episodes ever and he’s been there since the beginning, yet his run on the show has been boring. Since the show will probably end with season 25, why not have Matt… GROENING.. give it a shot?

Also, thanks for pointng me to the Futrama review blog, Charlie. I LOVE MeBlogWriteGood; I read it and this site every day. I’ll be reading the Futarama blog all the time, too, even though I think the show is vastly overrated. Maybe the most overrated show ever, actually. There’s another blog around that resembles MBWG that does South Park reviews, not sure if he still does it… I hate South Park so I never check…

This was fun to go through. Thanks for the mention of my Duff beer picture. And no, I don’t imagine German courts would ever have the bottles destroyed, or they’d at least wait until after they were empty.

Useful Legal Tidbit

Even though it’s obvious to anyone with a functional frontal lobe and a shred of morality, we feel the need to include this disclaimer. This website (which openly advocates for the cancellation of a beloved television series) is in no way, shape or form affiliated with the FOX Network, the News Corporation, subsidiaries thereof, or any of Rupert Murdoch’s wives or children. “The Simpsons” is (unfortunately) the intellectual property of FOX. We and our crack team of one (1) lawyer believe that everything on this site falls under the definition of Fair Use and is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. No revenue is generated from this endeavor; we’re here because we love “The Simpsons”. And besides, you can’t like, own a potato, man, it’s one of Mother Earth’s creatures.